Emailed Awesome

Knock-Off Beef Burgundy

A while back I bought some Mediterranean Beef Skewers. They were seriously on sale and it seemed like they would be handy to have in the freezer. However, they taste very strongly of rosemary – which it turns out, I don’t really like.

Naturally, I don’t want to waste the meat, so I decided to use it in my knock-off version of Beef Burgundy. I don’t make that very often because the recipe calls for cooking a bunch of bacon and then browning the meat in the bacon grease. I don’t care for browning large batches of meat – it’s messy and gets grease everywhere. It can also be very time consuming when cooking large quantities.

Note: I do not have a problem with bacon. Bacon Makes It Better. Remember that.

But the other day when I decided to use the Mediterranean beef, I figured we might as well grill it since it’s already on skewers. I could avoid the messy browning of the meat, assemble the stew as usual and continue cooking it in the oven. Plus, the smoky grill flavor might be a yummy added dimension.

It was TO DIE. Seriously. I might even order more of the skewers I don’t even like, just to make this stew.

Get two really deep disposable tin foil roasters – mine were 9 x 11 x 4 inches deep. Put half the bacon and half the meat into the bottom of each roaster. In a pan on top of the stove, sauté the mushrooms and onions together in a little bit of oil (or bacon grease). Pour half the mushroom/onion mixture over the meat in each roasting pan. Add 2 bay leaves to each pan.

Wisk the remaining ingredients together thoroughly, except one box of beef broth. It might be very thick. Feel free to add in the reserved broth, some V-8, or even some water. Pour half of the mixture into each casserole dish. Stir to combine, cover with foil and bake at 350° for 1.5 hours. (I put my roaster pans on cookie sheets to help me get them in and out of the oven) Uncover, stir, and bake uncovered an additional 1.5-ish hours or until meat is super tender. Stir occasionally. Depending on how thick you want the gravy, pour in the reserved beef broth until you get the desired consistency. Serve over egg noodles or mashed potatoes.

Obviously not everyone is going to have 7 pounds of skewers in their freezer, waiting to be turned into a delicious stew. But you could easily chunk some stew meat, and either marinate it in a rosemary salad dressing before putting it on skewers and grilling it, or do what my original recipe calls for and fry the meat in batches in the bacon grease.

The sauce was VERY thick and rich, so next time I’ll probably use less tomato paste. Maybe I’ll even cut it down by half and use V-8 juice along with the beef broth for the liquid. I had originally intended to quarter some red potatoes and cook them in the stew, but the roasting pans were so full, there wasn’t any room.

The method was not dissimilar to the Irish Beef and Stout stew I made the other day. The flavor was totally different though. I am more of a method cook than a recipe cook. The idea of a beef stew cooked in the oven for several hours could have all sorts of ingredients – use beer instead of wine, use V-8 instead of tomato paste, leave out the mushrooms and add carrots… the possibilities are endless. And it turned out to be a great way to use some meat I had in the freezer.

I was thrilled to put 9 quarts of this delicious stew in the freezer. Let me know if you try this!

* Actually they were puréed in my Magic Bullet to accomodate my husband and his Onion Issues. I wrote diced, because I assume that’s how normal people would do it.

We had this tonight. Oh. My. God. It was AMAZING. We’re a fan of the thicker sauces, so it was just perfect – especially over egg noodles. Our regular household was here today – one moderately fussy (now that he’s turning TWO!) toddler, two normal eaters and one hollow leg. We put a mild dent in the original amount of stew. I was STILL able to pack up four 1.5L tins of it for other nights. It was incredible. I wanted seconds, desperately – it was THAT good – but if I’d gone for ’em, I’d have exploded – it was that filling. AMAZING.

Seriously, though, I’m getting ready to pop in and comment on recipes with “Hey, it’s me. Yeah, same deal.” ‘Cause everything you’ve posted that I’ve been able to try has been WONDERFUL. WONDERFUL. And I’m even getting myself psyched up to do a whole freezer-cooking CYCLE. Like, three months at a go! And we have a gaming night every Tuesday that I’m going to be badgering the gamers to come up with their favorite things by quarter so I can add those to the massive shop / cook from freezer cycle as well. This is the Bestest Idea EVER!!